March, 2013

What’s this? Multimedia? Whatever next? What you are about to click is an audio extravaganza: a mathematical conversation between me and Dave Gale, who is @reflectivemaths on twitter. It’s the first episode of Wrong, But Useful. Mentioned in this podcast: The Maths/Maths podcast (with Samuel Hansen and Peter Rowlett) –

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers is one of very few library books I’ve ever failed to return on time. There’s a certain poetry to it: it’s a biography of Paul Erdős, one of the 20th century’s more important mathematicians, and certainly the most prolific. Yesterday would have been his

The student blinked, and the Mathematical Ninja had covered the board in a colourful diagram. “It’s easy,” said the Mathematical Ninja, “to work out the fractions of pi in each quadrant – once you know a few rules.” The student automatically reached for a pen. Whenever the Mathematical Ninja mentioned

“How is it,” asked my friend Jo, “that five of my friends are celebrating birthdays today?” This is, although it might not seem it, closely related to reading the minds of Alex Bellos’s parents. By which I mean: randomness doesn’t always look random. From here on in, I’m going to

I’m writing this fresh from giving a talk at Poole Grammar School about the maths of Alice in Wonderland and didn’t get a real chance there to talk about one of the ninjas behind it. János Bolyai is my favourite kind of mathematician: the glorious failure. He came really close